"...Mowgli was taught the 'Stranger's Call,' which must be repeated til it is answered, whenever one of the Jungle People hunts outside his own grounds. It means, translated, 'Give me leave to hunt here because I am hungry.' And the answer is 'Hunt then for food, but not for pleasure." - Rudyard Kipling

After some whitewater rafting in the Marsyandhi River near Besishihar, and a good while spinning my wheels in Pokhara, I decided that I needed to change my locale. I had heard about a national park called Bardia NP in the mostly untracked west of Nepal. Most tourists visit Kathmandu and Pokhara, trek and then split. Western Nepal is more remote and has been a stronghold of the Maoist insurgency and now the new governing party or Nepal since it inception, and Bardia was where it all began. So I jumped on a bus to Butwal to the south to begin what I knew would be a long journey. This was an understatement - the journey lasted 24 hours on four different buses with my backpack wedged between my legs most of the way through nowhere towns across the Tarai region. This was a sacrifice I endured to arrive in Paradise. Bardia is amazing.

I really had no idea what to expect from Bardia, I had literally seen it on the map and had decided that I would go there. As I was heading west to Rishikesh, India anyways I thought I would get off the beaten track. Bardia is the largest national park in the Tarai region fo southern Nepal and is home to One-horned Rhinos, wild Asiatic Elephants, Blackbuck Deer, Peacock, and of course Bengali Tigers. Unfortunately poaching is endemic, brought on by the demands of dealers in the ancient (and utterly retarded) Chinese Medicine industry. Traditional Chinese medicine has to be biggest pile of hokee bullshit I have ever heard of. As if eating dried Tiger penis or drinking Rhino horn tea will bring you eternal life. Give me a break. All over Asia, and the world, this lucrative criminal trade is devestating rare species.

I was dreading having my birthday on a bus bound for India so I decided to stay around for a while. I intended to stay 2 nights, maybe 3, but ended up spending 8. I spent my birthday riding on top of buses, sleeping in the jungle under a beautiful full moon, and swimming in the great Karnali River on its long way to the Ganges, in search of the endangered Gangetic Dolphin, with a French wildlife photgrapher named Tristan. I also went into the parkl one day with a guesthouse owner named Shankar. We headed off early and found large tiger tracks crossing a river. They were perhaps ten minutes old, and were made by a tiger approximately 6.5 metres in length from head to tail. Perhaps the famous and mysterious Shere Khan. The crazy things is that the tiger was probably hiding in the grass only 10 metres or so from where we were. Later we spotted a one horned Rhino, wild Elephants, monkeys, 3 types of deer, peacock, and more. An absolutely beautiful location. I hope that it can endure. I fear that the Maoists will give away the land bordering the park to landless people to appease them, and this will only encourage more forays into to it by locals. They just don't seem that concerned with wildlife at all here. I have found that Nepalis, though very friendly, are awfully complacent. If something can be put off until another day they will do it. This I fear cannot wait for another day, or there will be nothing left to conserve.